Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend! Ours went by in a blur. Saturday in the city, Sunday, eating way too much with my father who is recovering from Pneumonia. I love how good food in good company can heal. I love hearing stories about my great-grandma Maggie. She was a sweetheart, spitfire. With a shotgun. I loved sitting in her darkened living room during the summer. The room where we stayed cool and watched her stories or The Price is Right. I know I watched TV in the evening but I couldn’t tell you what. I do remember being enthralled by her stories of the South. Holmes County, MS.
I was never bored during the summer even though she didn’t have a car. We had to wait for a cousin or neighbor or my dad to call and ask if we needed to get out and then we'd go out to do a little shopping.
She would switch out her housedress for slacks and a shirt or a sweater, etc. Don one of her wigs and we’d head out. These errands were magical. Going to Fairplay, Wassos, Dixmoor Meat market. There are a lot of stories, anecdotes, even meals I’d never had the pleasure of seeing, and hearing, tasting firsthand and it kills me sometimes. Mt great grandma was my touchstone for love. She’s been gone for 21 years and I still tear up when I look at her face. The only love that has equaled it (nearly because it is of course, a different love!) Is what I have with my husband.
Nothing else.
I wish she was here to see my face. The happiness in it, in my heart. To see that I have straightened up. That I am not the same girl who swiped her pocket change because I didn’t know better, but wanted better and didn’t know there weren’t any shortcuts.
I’d give anything to hear those stories firsthand. To wake up to darkness, to the smell of Folgers and bacon and scrambled eggs cooked in bacon drippings. Heaven~